wtf fun fact

WTF Fun Fact 12913 – St. Hildegard of Bingen

Being a medieval nun didn’t come with many perks – and it certainly didn’t come with much power. Well, unless you’re the (now St.) Hildegard of Bingen.

Who is Hildegard of Bingen?

The 12th-century abbess was given to the church by her noble family at age 8 and took her vows at age 15. She was an enclosed “anchorite,” which, according to Atlas Obscura (cited below) “were metaphorically “buried” in a small cell or structure attached to a monastery or church. They were often given food through grilles, and were allowed little or no communication with the outside world.”

She spent the next three decades learning about music, botany, health, and healing. It wasn’t until she was in her 40s that she was called by God to start writing things down, after which she became a prolific writer and composer.

Hildegard could have easily been seen as a heretic because she was an openly vocal critic of Church abuses of wealth and power who unapologetically insisted she had visions and received prophecies sent by God. But the Church believed her and needed her intellect.

Why is St. Hildegarde famous?

After Hildegard began writing, a monk friend of hers began translating her words into proper Latin, and in 1147 her work Scivas was given to Pope Eugenius III. He declared her work important to the church and later called on her to start preaching.

While the word “feminist” didn’t exist at the time, she did use her visions to empower herself and carve out a place for herself in the Church. And she could be highly critical of the institution as well, calling out their desire for power and prestige over piety. She believe Church corruption was destroying the faith.

Atlas Obscura notes that “Hildegard became an advisor and honest critic of Kings, Queens, Emperors, Popes and priests. Over 400 of her letters survive, and according to biographer Fiona Maddocks, they offer fascinating insight into the different ways she portrayed herself. To men, she was but a poor, frail woman, who was speaking what God had told her. In her correspondence with women, she was much more straightforward and honest, often dispensing practical advice from one of her many areas of expertise.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “The Medieval Prophetess Who Used Her Visions to Criticize the Church” — Atlas Obscura

WTF Fun Fact 12912 – Tons of Twins

There are more twins living now than ever before. Well, at least we think so. We only started recording the rate at which twins were born in the 1980s when it was about 1 in every 50 pregnancies (2%).

The rise of the twin rate

The rate at which twins were born went up to 2.5% in 1995. By 2001 it was 3%, and it rose to 3.3% in 2010.

Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic (cited below) explained how he calculated the number of twins as of 2014: “When the CDC calculated the number through 2009, they pegged it at 865,000. Now that several years more data is available, I recalculated the number. I took the number of twins that would have been born if the 1980 twin rate had held, and subtracted it from how many twins were actually born.

The result: 1,009,337! That’s a million extra twins from 1981 through 2012, the most recent year for which data is available.”

Why so many twins?

Madrigal also reported that “A few years ago, the Centers for Disease Control researchers looked into the phenomenon.” They did so because, from an evolutionary perspective, twins are more likely to result in premature births and low birth weights – neither of which is ideal for human survival.

The reason? They can only guess, but “Older women tend to have more twins than younger women—and older women are having more of the nation’s babies. The researchers found this demographic phenomenon accounted for one-third of the increase. They attributed the rest of it to the increase in infertility treatments, specifically in-vitro fertilization and ‘ovulation stimulation medications.'”

Reproductive technology allows for multiple embryos to be implanted during IVF, and that’s common since implanting more embryos has a better chance of resulting in a successful pregnancy – of course, it also increases the chance of having twins. However, as the technology gets better, more couples are opting to have just one embryo transferred.

The “twin rate” seems to have leveled off as a result, but hasn’t reversed yet. — WTF fun facts

Source: “There Really Are So Many More Twins Now” — The Atlantic

WTF Fun Fact 12191 – The Prevalence of Thunderstorms

At any given moment, there are around 2,000 thunderstorms taking place on the planet. Each year, 16 million thunderstorms take place on Earth.

What are thunderstorms?

A thunderstorm is simply a rain shower during which you can hear thunder. They are the result of moisture being lifted from the ground and into the air via a phenomenon called convection.

According to NOAA (cited below): “Three basic ingredients are required for a thunderstorm to form: moisture, rising unstable air (air that keeps rising when given a nudge), and a lifting mechanism to provide the ‘nudge.’ The sun heats the surface of the earth, which warms the air above it. If this warm surface air is forced to rise—hills or mountains, or areas where warm/cold or wet/dry air bump together can cause rising motion—it will continue to rise as long as it weighs less and stays warmer than the air around it. As the air rises, it transfers heat from the surface of the earth to the upper levels of the atmosphere (the process of convection). The water vapor it contains begins to cool, releases the heat, condenses and forms a cloud. The cloud eventually grows upward into areas where the temperature is below freezing. As a storm rises into freezing air, different types of ice particles can be created from freezing liquid drops. The ice particles can grow by condensing vapor (like frost) and by collecting smaller liquid drops that haven’t frozen yet (a state called ‘supercooled’). When two ice particles collide, they usually bounce off each other, but one particle can rip off a little bit of ice from the other one and grab some electric charge. Lots of these collisions build up big regions of electric charges to cause a bolt of lightning, which creates the sound waves we hear as thunder.”

A thunderstorm usually starts without rain and does not need to contain lightning.

Facts about thunderstorms

Each year, there are an estimated 16 million thunderstorms on the planet and 10,000 in the U.S. alone. However, only 10% of these reach the “severe” thunderstorm category in which wind, rain, and lightning can do damage.

While spring and summer are the most common time for thunderstorms, they can occur year-round.

Thunderstorms might seem innocent, but they can be deadly. NOAA notes that “Many hazardous weather events are associated with thunderstorms. Under the right conditions, rainfall from thunderstorms causes flash flooding, killing more people each year than hurricanes, tornadoes or lightning. Lightning is responsible for many fires around the world each year, and causes fatalities. Hail up to the size of softballs damages cars and windows, and kills livestock caught out in the open. Strong (up to more than 120 mph) straight-line winds associated with thunderstorms knock down trees, power lines and mobile homes. Tornadoes (with winds up to about 300 mph) can destroy all but the best-built man-made structures.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Severe Weather 101” — NOAA

WTF Fun Fact 12910 – Iron Mountain Vault

Not many people have heard of Iron Mountain – especially outside of western Pennsylvania. It’s probably better that way since no one is allowed near it. Iron Mountain is a vault holding some of the nation’s (and the world’s) most valuable documents and recordings.

What is Iron Mountain?

Iron Mountain Vault is a data storage facility buried deep underground in the hills of western Pennsylvania. The 1200-acre vault used to be a limestone mine, and you’d have a hard time finding it today even if you looked. They obviously don’t advertise or have big signs letting you know you’re there.

Oh, and there are guards to make sure people don’t get anywhere near it.

According to Penn Live:

“Miners created the cave by exploding 3,000 sticks of dynamite nightly over the course of five decades. They abandoned it in the 1950s when surfacing mining became a cheaper alternative to unearth the limestone.

Soon after, the mine was converted into a storage facility, storing paper records. In more recent years, it became a place to house data centers, including many of those belonging to government agencies and private companies.

The mine is like a small underground city. It has its own fire brigade with trained firefighters, security, streets, a speed limit (10 mph), traffic signs, street names, pedestrian walkways, and addresses assigned to its thousands of tenants that occupy its 16-foot-high corridors.”

What’s inside the Vault?

There’s plenty of mundane stuff (at least to most of us) in Iron Mountain. The facility’s owner simply rents out the space as well as takes on the temperature control and safety responsibilities.

The vault continues to grow, sprawling out with each new customer. Around 2,000 people work at the mine these days.

And what’s inside? Well, a lot – from the accounts of nearly every government student loan holder to master recordings of Ozzy Osbourne and Frank Sinatra. According to the Iron Mountain website, the facility stores “some of the world’s most valuable information.” They’re just not real specific about what it is.

— WTF fun facts

Source: “Inside Iron Mountain” — Penn Live

WTF Fun Fact 12909 – The Land Animal That Lived The Longest

This is something that will make you appreciate how our modern world is still so, so young. The longest-lived creatures are older than any of us, and most were or are older than our desire or ability to record their age for posterity. That said, we do have records of the land animal that lived the longest that we can properly verify. Other animals may have lived longer, but we don’t have reliable ways to prove it.

The radiated tortoise – one of the longest-lived animals

When it comes to sea creatures, we’re even more clueless as to age, and we endanger them by trying to find out. But it’s a bit easier with land animals, especially tortoises since they don’t move very fast.

As far as things we can verify are concerned, a radiated tortoise from Madagascar named Tu’i Malila is the longest-lived land animal. And here’s another fun fact – all its life, Tu’i Malila was thought to be a male. Upon her death, a proper examination was conducted, and it was determined she was female. (Some tortoises obviously don’t have obvious sex characteristics.)

The story of Tu’i Malila

Tu’i Malila means “King” Malila in the Tongan language and records show that Captain James Cook gave her to the royal family of Tonga shortly after her birth in 1777. She stayed in the royal family’s care her whole life until her death in 1965.

The radiated tortoise (a classification that has nothing to do with radiation but rather the pattern on their shells) is now preserved and on display at the Tongan National Center on the island of Tongatapu.

Other “oldest” animals

However, there is some disagreement over what counts as the oldest living animal. Some argue that an Aldabra giant tortoise from India named Adwaita lived to be around 255.

This year (in January 2022) the keepers of a giant tortoise named Jonathan have convinced the Guinness Book of World Records that the animal from St. Helena turned 190.

— WTF fun facts

Source: “The King of Tonga” — The Good Turtle Blog

WTF Fun Fact 12908 – Lincolnshire Wildlife Park’s Swearing Parrots

Five African grey parrots at the UK’s Lincolnshire Wildlife Park got separated by staff because they were perceived as having a “bad influence” on one another. Someone taught the parrots to swear. And there’s a reason they call repeating things “parroting.”

While no guests complained, the zoo took the proactive step of separating them in case any visiting children ever decided to parrot the parrots.

Parrots and profanity

According to The Guardian (cited below), “The parrots – named Billy, Elsie, Eric, Jade and Tyson – joined Lincolnshire Wildlife Park’s colony of 200 grey parrots in August. But soon after, they started encouraging each other to swear.”

“We saw it very quickly – we are quite used to parrots swearing but we’ve never had five at the same time,” Steve Nichols, CEO of the wildlife park reportedly said. “Most parrots clam up outside, but for some reason these five relish it.”

No one got rid of the parrots – they were simply “distributed to different areas of the park so they do not ‘set each other off.'”

Naughts parrots

Guests weren’t put off at all by the parrots. In fact, as you might expect, they drew people into the facility. “People have come to us but they think it’s highly amusing, we haven’t had one complaint,” Nichols said, according to The Guardian. “When a parrot tells you to fuck off, it amuses people very highly. It’s brought a big smile to a really hard year.”

We know some humans who offer that service for free as well, but someone it just seems less rude coming from a parrot.

The paper also noted that “The park is also home to parrot Chico, who made headlines in September after learning to sing a range of pop songs, including Beyoncé’s If I Were a Boy.”

It sounds like quite an interesting place! — WTF fun facts

Source: “Swearing parrots separated after telling folk where to go” — The Guardian

WTF Fun Fact 12907 – The Controversy Over Santa Anna’s Leg

Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón – known as General Santa Anna – was a Mexican politician and military general who fought for the independence of Mexico in the mid 1800s. And while much is known about him, less is known about the ongoing “fight” between Illinois and Texas for custody of Santa Anna’s leg.

When did Santa Anna lose his leg?

Santa Anna was a controversial figure who gave up Mexican territory to the U.S. but continued to be a hero to his troops nevertheless.

In the little-known Pastry War (1838-1839) against the French, he lost his left leg.

French troops shot Santa Anna in the leg at the Battle of Veracruz (1838). They used a French grapeshot (a bag of smaller caliber rounds bound together rather than a single piece of ammunition), which damaged the leg so badly that doctors had to amputate it. Later, Santa Anna used the moment not only to hold a full military funeral for the leg but to use it as propaganda to gain back power after retiring a few years earlier.

The leg funeral took place in Mexico city. However, protestors later dug up the limb and dragged it through the streets.

But this is not the leg at the heart of the controversy.

The battle for a wooden leg

Santa Anna had a wooden prosthetic made to replace his leg. Today, it’s in Illinois of all places.

According to the Chicago Tribune:

“In 1847, the United States and Mexico fought what Americans call the Mexican War and Mexicans call the Invasion of Mexico. During that conflict, his forces were surprised by a gallant Illinois infantry unit. He fled on horseback, leaving the prosthesis behind.
Our troops took the abandoned appendage into custody and transported it to Illinois, prudently assuring it would never again be put to warlike purposes. It has resided here since, and is currently among the holdings of the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield.”

Over the last few decades, Texas has tried to claim ownership of the wooden leg. Illinois will not relinquish it.

In an editorial in 2016 (cited below), the Tribune’s board wrote: “A museum at the San Jacinto Battlefield, where he was captured and forced to give up his claim to Texas, has petitioned the White House to get the leg moved there, where it would keep company with his knee buckle and tent stake. Students at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio think they should get the leg so they can give it to Mexico.”

The answer to Texas’ request has been a resounding “no” from Illinois. “At San Jacinto, Santa Anna still had the legs he was born with. Texans didn’t inflict the injury that necessitated the replacement, and Texans didn’t capture it or preserve it for 169 years. As we all know, possession is nine parts of the law,” noted the editorial board. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Santa Anna’s leg? Come and take it.” — Chicago Tribune (editorial board)

WTF Fun Fact 12906 – People Seem to Love Throwing Bikes in Water

We don’t understand it. It’s a phenomenon that’s still being investigated across the world. What’s behind the desire for people to throw perfectly usable bicycles into waterways like rivers, lakes, and canals? After all, it’s such a waste.

Mistreated bikes are a big problem

Amsterdam is one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world. And yet, lately, city workers have been pulling out roughly 15,000 bikes each year(!) from canals. There are so many bikes on the bottom of these canals that they sometimes scrape the bottom of barges coming through. And despite that obscenely large number of trashed bikes, it’s actually less of a problem than it was years ago.

Bike-sharing companies have had to pull their bikes out of rivers in Southern China and Rome’s Tiber River as well. In fact, bike-sharing companies have pulled out of some cities because they cost is greater than the reward.

But why on earth are people so wasteful? What’s the point of trashing a (in most cases) perfectly good bike?

Why do people throw bikes in the water?

On a 2022 episode of NPR’s All Things Considered (cited below), author of Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle, Jody Rosen, tried to shed some light on the matter.

She said: “When you see the bicycle go in there and slip below the surface of the water, there’s just a certain satisfaction, a certain free zone in that. And I say that not because I’ve done it myself, mind you. This is a practice which is documented online, for instance, on YouTube quite comprehensively. So there’s lots of videos that you can see where people are tossing bikes into water and taking videos of it for fun and sport. So that is definitely a factor. But there’s all kinds of other types of vandalism that surround this, which I think are interesting.”

Rosen believes bike-sharing programs make it easier for people to take these two-wheelers for granted, noting, “The fact that these bike programs are proliferating across the world, which I think we can say is a good thing — we need more bicycles in the city — but there are simply more of them around. And in fact, you can imagine that people feel a little bit more impunity, that a potential bicycle drowner would feel less guilt attached to tossing a bike in the water if it’s a share bike that has a bank or some sort of corporate sponsor’s logo on the mudguard as opposed to, you know, some individual joe-schmoe’s bike.”

Interestingly, Rosen also thinks there may be a political dimension to this – that somehow people are threatened by bikes because they are so attached to the idea of driving a car. “We’re seeing a kind of increasingly heated debate over what kinds of vehicles belong on the streets of cities. Motorists are reacting to the increased numbers of bicycles on the streets, sometimes with great annoyance and and sometimes with actual violence. So it may be that at least these drowned bikes, these trashed and vandalized bikes reflect a kind of ongoing battle for the right to the roadways,” she suggested.

Whatever the reasons, this is happening all over the world, in bike-friendly cities. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Why do so many bikes end up underwater? The reasons can be weird and varied” — NPR

WTF Fun Fact 12902 – Tom Cruise Split From Wives At Age 33

Tom Cruise has been married three times. And all of his marriages ended when his wife at the time was 33 years old. Coincidence? Maybe.

The significance of 33

What is it about the number 33? Tom Cruise’s three wives – Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, and Katie Holmes – were all 33 when their relationships with the actor ended. They were all 34 when the divorce was finalized.

Cruise is a Scientologist, and while there’s no proof that the “magic number” had anything to do with the breakup, 33 is a significant number for him. However, it’s not clear that Cruise was in control of any of the breakups – in fact, Katie Holmes was said to have left him.

As for the actual significance of the number 33, it’s hard to say. Scientologists are a notoriously secret group, so while some “sources” say the number is important, it’s unclear exactly how. We do know that L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, built his first church in Phoenix, on the 33rd parallel.

Is it all a coincidence?

The average age of divorcing couples in the U.S. is around 30 years old, so it’s more than likely just a kooky coincidence. The number has some significance in other religions an in numerology, but it’s not clear if Cruise believes in any of that.

It’s also worth noting that while the news widely covered the fact that Cruise’s breakups all came when his wife at the time was 33, all of the divorces happened when they were 34. It’s just that Holmes announced the breakup when she was 33, people picked up on the number, and no one was sure how old Holmes would be when the divorce was finalized.

So maybe 34 is the unlucky number here. – WTF fun facts

Source: “All three of Tom Cruise’s marriages ended when wife was 33” — TODAY